Jeremy Stephens & Cody Garbrandt explain scuffle backstage

Thursday morning during the UFC 207 early weigh-ins, UFC bantamweight title challenger Cody Garbrandt, and UFC featherweight Jeremy Stephens, who is a teammate of Garbrandt’s opponent Dominick Cruz, were involved in a bit of an altercation backstage.

While there has been no video of the altercation, footage of security guards quickly darting backstage to handle the situation while UFC women’s bantamweight champion Amanda Nunes hit the scales, quickly surfaced.

Now, in an interview with MMAFighting, Jeremy Stephens and Cody Garbrandt have opened up on the situation.

Stephens explained:

“I was a little bit further behind, grabbing a couple bags, and I see Dominick getting into it with Cody. The UFC is then, like, OK, you can go over there. So of course, I’m following behind, kinda seeing them get into an altercation. Dom kinda turns around, he’s talking crap and Cody walks away. As I’m doing that, the UFC guys tell me I have to go through a certain door. So I turn my back and I take a couple steps and then I hear someone say, Yeah, you better keep walking. You and your whole team blah blah blah. I look over and it’s Cody approaching me. He’s coming at me fast, like he’s going to push me. I just put my arm out and the security guy picks me up, moves me out. Cody starts getting all hot-headed, screaming, trying to throw his shirt off, trying to fight me. I’m laughing. Like, Hey bro, you better get serious, you’re fighting my teammate tomorrow. I’m here for Dom. Then they broke it up. I was just shocked by the whole situation. This dude has got a fight coming up and he’s mad at me. I thought me and him were cordial. I got no problems with him. I’m here to support my teammate.”

“I stiff-armed him. We both kinda grabbed each other.

Garbrandt also spoke to MMAFighting, explaining that he didn’t start the incident, and was merely reacting to the situation:

“Dude’s a b*tch and scratched my neck with his b*tch nails. He is lucky I had my hands full and was taken from behind by a few people. Cruz knows he can’t beat me so he brings his self-proclaimed savage in and hype man.